Thanks for an outstanding video on the Rock Pi 4B. I greatly enjoyed the cooling tests portion of the video. One aspect of your productions are extreme useful is the having the command line comments presented at the bottom so they are clear for the viewer. Keep up your excellent work!
Another outstanding video and review. Special thanks for including the shell commands for apt-get and others in the little yellow callouts. The extra work is greatly appreciated. The information makes things clear and helps us follow along. Thanks again!
Very informative. Been lovin my Rock Pi 4B for a few weeks now. Will run your bench tests on my 1TB Samsung NVMe SSD. Wasn't aware of the new shorter PCIe board. Thanks for the info. Mounted mine on the opposite side of the large heatsink to allow better access to the uSD slot & GPIO header.
The M.2 expansion board update with the new form factor is indeed a great improvement. The fan cooling setup is nice alternative to the big heatsink arrangement. Overall is coming together very nicely. The testing helps out a lot Chris. Hope to get one in the near future. Until next time....
I've been looking forward to this video Chris, and you did not disappoint (of course!). I too was not enamored with the original NVMe mounting solution, but the new iteration looks great. Thanks as always for your methodical and well presented tests!
Although I will always be a huge fan of the traditional desktop; something I have noticed, as you did in this video, is how affordable these SBCs are getting. Of course, the original SBCs were always affordable, but their performance per £ was nothing compared to what we see today. One could argue that someone with a very stringent income could afford a basic Rock Pi 64 and use it as their home computer. It wouldn't be a power house, but it would be powerful and cheap enough to be useable and accessible. I know this might not be the main demographic that SBC manufacturers are targeting (I suspect they are targeting tinkerers, hobbyists, and embedded system applications); but even as just a by-product of SBC success, I think it's great that computing has truly reached an affordable level for everyone. :)
What is truly affordable is recycling, just got a i5 2500 with 8gb of ddr3 for free. This is probably the 6th computer I have saved from the garbage and will find it a home that will appreciate it. Only downside is almost always have to get a power cable and a hdd or ssd to get them running.
Another great video, Chris! I did notice the NVMe card is bowed in the middle from the pems for other sized modules. Recommend a spacer or washer to get rid of the bow.
Thank you for this video and your others about this SBC, I've been researching the heck out of which one to go with for my All-In-One device project, and this looks to be about it.
That new M.2 board is a big improvement over the original. Good to see that the manufacturer is so responsive to criticisms. Should inspire confidence in anyone wanting to purchase one of these SBCs.
I'm really enjoying your videos: thanks. With respect to the cooling of the standard Rock Pi 4B that has a cut-out hole in the Perspex cover, it's an inherently bad design to restrict the air flow to the heat exchanger like that. With this sort of finned exchanger without a fan, you want to allow free convection to carry away the hot air, and by burying it under an insulating piece of plastic, and restricting the air flow to it, it's not going to work as well as it should. I think the main advantage from using that big aluminium exchanger is mainly due to that. In fact, having a small fan and removing the perspex heat shield would likely show even better results.
Thanks for the fantastic video. These boards really are quite impressive for the price. I'm seriously thinking about getting one now. I have no idea what I'd do with it, other than nerd around with it, but I'd still like to get one. I'm sure I'd eventually find some kind of use for it though, if I got one lol.
That's exactly how I ended up owning one! LOL! Recently jumped on the Raspberry Pi bandwagon. Just couldn't resist the Rock Pi 4B specs. Got the 4 GB ram, 64GB eMMC, 1TB NVMe SSD. Now, I'm looking for excuses for uses. The worst part is that I'm a retired PC (Windows) tech, with no previous Linux experience. This is NOT Windows nor Raspberry Pi. Within an hour of receiving the RPi, I was switching LEDs on and off, via GPIO pins & Python coding. Plan on using Pi's for an environmental control system in a greenhouse. They have been around long enough to have become nearly id10T proof. The Rock Pi 4B is a very young product. OS and compatibility issues are still being ironed out. Linux heads consider this to be a challenge and there's a helpful community on the support wiki. I figure that we will eventually become much more compatible. :-)
I bought this unit after your first review, as a good platform for experimentation. I have it booting, but for some reason it didn’t detect my keyboard in Debian. My M.2 isn’t set up, and I may order the new adapter. I’m not sure if it would detect a USB KVM dongle, but I should get another USB keyboard anyway. Enjoy the videos, as I’ve been following tech since the 50’s, and it’s sometimes a bit scary. 🙂
Be careful with the extender board when used in conjunction with the eMMC card. The small adapter board from the extender board set presses on the silicon die of the eMMC. This could potentially damage the eMMC die. I brought this up on the Rock Pi forums, and they are working on a fix, but it does not appear to be ready just yet.
I only know one Norbert , who was very helpful in shipping my order ~1 month ago. Thanks for the info. Just received my new M.2 board. (Thanks ;-) )Was wondering if the adapter had been modified. Hate to say it, but the wooden case looks more like a piece of conversational art that would sit on a shelf than a serious protective case. Gonna build/modify an aluminum case to see if I can use it as a heatsink w/fan.
I got a Rock Pi 4B after watching some of your videos and reading about the Panfrost open source driver. So far it's an awesome SBC. I have a bunch of Raspberry Pis and an old Cubieboard v1 but these new RK3399 boards are FAST! The Rock Pi seems to be an excellent value if you're willing to forgo the Raspberry Pi software ecosystem. I've been running custom images on my Raspberry Pis anyways (64 bit Debian and Gentoo) so the experience with the Rock Pi is pretty similar. So far I think I prefer Armbian for its single partition setup. Trying to figure out how to build my own kernel and boot it on the Rock Pi. Built fine, but can't figure out how to boot it.
I’m always fascinated with the heat testing. So pleased they sent the new extension board, but would have liked to have seen you try to remove and then insert the sad card. It still looks awkward. With that being said, I do like the longer cable. Looking forward to your next video!
@@ExplainingComputers Thanks so much for the reply. I can visualize what you are talking about. I appreciate it. By the way, if I could only have one TH-cam channel to follow, it would be yours.
495MB/sec with a NVMe HAT, I'm impressed! . My Rpi 4 8Gb tops at: 301.95 Mb/sec with a USB 3 to SATA adapter(Kingston A400 480Gb) and 308.04 MB/sec with a Samsung T5 1TB external SSD.
Update Sep 9th: My Rpi4 8gb OC'd to 2.147Ghz running TwisterOS 1.5 and booting from a Samsung Evo 860 SSD w/ ASM1153E USB3 to SATA adapter scores 395MB/sec w/ UAS and Trim enabled.
Hello Chris, I used the sudo hdparm -t --direct command to compare the speeds on an ssd connected via usb 2 adapter to the pi 3B+ VS the speed of an sd card. So the ssd is around 30 MB/sec while the SD card is 11 MB/sec. Of course i used your other great video about the berryboot to run raspbian from the ssd drive. im waiting for the Pi 4 B that i have ordered , so when using the ssd via usb 3 i will have much faster speeds. Great videos.... im learning so much! thank you!
You will have MUCH faster speeds! I have done this very hdparm desk on a Pi 4 (and a Jetson Nano) in this week's video. The extra USB speed is stunning. :)
well that is a fine package and the fact they actually responded, making the adjustment right away! would like to see a 8GB version! those small boards are awesome to run small dedicated game servers due to low power consumption and the fact you do not need to use a big bulky computer for it! (specially if you have many for many servers for many games or maps!)
Greetings! :) I have a Jetson Nano arriving this week -- a video should post here on 28 April, probably the first of several. I may look at an UP as some point -- though probably before that an UDOO BOLT (long promised) and Odroid H2 (when available again).
@@airwaveindehouse Unfortunately and I mean this seriously Nvidia have no interest in supporting Open Drivers for any of their gear, the drivers are god awful binary blobs on old kernels. I am hoping AMD move into the Arm space to straighten things up a bit with Vega/Navi ( AI ) .. That would be far more friendly and interesting than the Nvidia offering which really is super over priced also.
Hello Chris. Great video that brightens my cloudy Sunday here. 🌞 Combination of the best: Linux + SBC + NVMe + Testing. Nice suggestion in comment below, how about a Jetson Nano review?
@@sethrd999 you dont have to use it JUST to boot. If you have a 1TB NVMe and can boot from it, why wouldn't you want to boot from it? It's a shame that something that can use it cant boot from it (yet)
Great review and stellar job at doing it. Just a thought though, how would it do with a egpu (via tb3 or m.2)? Just makes me more curious because this hasn't really been done before on an arm cpu (At least that I know of).
So we've seen temperature test results for a small heatsink, a large heatsink, and a small heatsink with small fan attached... Now I'm curious to see if having 2 small fans, attached to the large heatsink (side by side, like some PC video cards) would have an even greater impact on temperature 🙂
Hi Christopher. Great video. I've learned something, how to get the desimal right for the temperature. I once searched so long for it... I always use that command for a taskbar application, but without the decimal. Nice to see the NVMe tests. I couldn't do it because the drive I bought didn't work. It was the cheapest I could find. There is a way of getting the NVMe faster. Search for KingSpec 128GB M.2 NVMe not found Debian+Ubuntu(a thread I started, the last post is what you need) I made my PineH64 video this week. I like the board a lot, but for great software it will be waiting for kernel 5.2. Then there'll be GPU support in mainline for the H6. It is a better design than the OPi3, except it's wifi is 2.4Ghz vs 5Ghz of the OPi3. I've got my Odroid N2 since the beginning of the week. They send it faster than expected. I love it a lot for what I need it to do. But there are problems with it that I hope can be fixed. I also seem to have a faulty ethernet netwerk adapter. It doesn't work when on gigabit, but it does work when on 100Mbit. Luckily I don't normally use ethernet. Hardkernel is looking for a sollution. The N2 is superfast. The RK3399's are no match against it's CPU power. But it lacks in connectivity. No on-board wifi, only 1 lane USB3 shared over 4 ports(can only have the speed of 1 port over all of them), and nothing else to connect to. No sata or PCIe. It also doesn't have good GPU/VPU drivers. But that's expected of such a new board, but I hope that's comming, because that's it's only selling point. Being great for gaming and desktop use. Greetings. Have a nice day. NicoD.
Thanks Nico -- I searched a lot for the syntax too! :) I will follow up on the NVMe speed thing. Good luck with your N2. As always, software is the most important thing.
Great video, good effort and nice to see, was that Lineage os Android TV, it looked a lovely operating system, similar to the Nvidia shield and android TV on the xu4, this rock pi is looking a better choice than the other rk3399 boards.
I've been using the board running Android and connected to my TV as a TH-cam player for the past few days. Works very well indeed. So far it is my favourite RK3399 SBC.
@@ExplainingComputers The Raspberry Pi has been into orbit on the ISS. Rock Pi should go one better and send two Rock Pi's to the moon. They would, of course, then be moon Rocks... Thank you.
Very informative! It makes me curious how this board compares with the newly released Raspberry Pi in terms of processing and IO speeds. Smart choice by Radxa to go with the lightweight LXDE, although that's going to be replaced in the future by LXQt. But I'm not sure if Radxa is updating anyway. That's the main thing (for me) that SBC's are suffering from: older software. So, it's nice to see there is a Community Image Page; that might change things!
there are more distributions starting to support ROCK PI 4 directly. Next to the mainline kernel support we have Armbian which is maintained directly, also just a few days ago Manjaro ARM anounced 19.06 and the support for ROCK PI 4.
Hey Chris, I am currently looking at ordering this board shortly so thanks for the update, I am putting a build script together ( Arch root ) with Ayufan'd UBoot + Kernel 5.0/1 + latest Mesa for panfrost/midgard/bifrost ( Mali Txx/Gxx support). Everything being equal the performance should be pretty good I would imagine. Il let you know how it goes, perhaps you might want to try my image also if/when its good to go.
Hi. I loved theese videos about m.2 disks mounted on sbc. Did you installed the operating system on that disks? Or that diska are secondary ones? Thanks.
the kodi build is way out of date and the only video plugin that might still work would be the youtube so i don't think there's a problem. nice informative video with no bull as usual.
@@ExplainingComputers I'm curious if there's a noticeable effect depending on how the fan is oriented to the big heatsink (align airflow parallel/perpendicular/onto the heatsink ridges). I bet you could get 3 or 4 of these and arrange them in a chimney arrangement (think mac-pro) with a single fan blowing upwards cooling them all.
I am getting ready to try out MX Linux on an old Atom net book that's currently running Mint 17.1. I think it'll be pretty good on something low power. Also, AntiX, a related project is supposed to be good on low-power machines. Lubuntu isn't a bad starting place, as was recommended, but I don't think it's as light as it used to be, so I'm going to try MX first. Plus, I like xfce more.
Hi Chris and people who read comments. I'm thinking of putting together home automation based on sbc with touchscreen monitor (and mount it on a wall). Not sure if that was covered before, but I think I'd need fairly quick Android. What would be your recommendations for such a setting. And Chris your videos remind me those 1980s tv programs on the future of computers etc. Guess we are similar age. Big fan.
Hi Chris, I'm not sure if it's available for ARM, but on x86 I found stress and stress-ng to be better than sysbench for stressing the CPU. You can also specify the required number of threads and time to run the test (in seconds). For Debian--based distributions, both should be right in the system repositories.
Thanks for this. I will see if an ARM version is available, and works with this board. In the past I've strugged to find anything other than SysBench to actually work for such tests on ARM SBCs.
This is what I'm using. You need something that supports AES-NI crypto for future versions of pfSense. Something with a fair amount of memory and decent CPU. The APU2d4 is $120. www.pcengines.ch/apu2d4.htm
@@ExplainingComputers ...roughing up the heat sink base side w/320~400 grit sandpaper helps... & sticking a 10 penny nail or two in a small HS's fins helps too! Cheers
@@TuttleScott years of thermal analysis, on average up to 5 deg C drop is possible. It's not performed in commercial pcba assembly due to cost/time constraints. The biggest issue in the industry i found is flatness, e.g., the HS base is concave and the chip top is concave ( or visa versa ). For the most part, roughing a HS base in a random pattern increases the surface area resulting in better thermal transfer. 2nd part of the equation is cleaning the surfaces before using tape, paste or glue & applying the correct pressure.... w/o breaking anything. ( & it may look odd, but if there's room, the nail(s) works ) ... Cheers
I was thinking the same thing, he should have put like a full on PC fan on the large heatsink. If you're gonna have this big and bulky of an SBC, might as well go all the way
Can you test this board with other (much slower but still faster than 500MB/s) NVMe? I'm wondering if the transfer speeds would be comparable or lower to those of the WD drive.
Hi, just love your Rasp berry Pi videos and I have a need to install security cameras in my house and wondering if there’s a way to use a Rasp Berry Pi 4B as a NVR. Thank you very much.
I simply plugged it in and it worked, after mounting the drive (sudo mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 ). I prefer my SSD mounted on the opposite side of the heatsink, which allows access to the microSD slot & board's connectors. Used a layered RPi case, which also has an internal cooling fan. Pics on the Radxa forum. Folks there are very helpful. Hope this helps.
Great and amazing work...as usual from you. Only one question: have try to register to Allinet shop but it seems they only sell to resellers and not to final customers.. do I'm wrong? How could I buy these stuff as a normal private customer? Many thank's
Hi Chris, I have a question. Is it possible to move the /home. To the M.2 drive or is this not possible on an Arm OS I'm going to be using the Manjaro arm install for the set up you have on this vid and I was wondering the use of the extra drive if I can't do this. Thank for any help and thoughts I truly respect your opinion.
I recently saw a Crowdsupply FPGA board [NiteFury] that uses the M.2 interface. That got me wondering: Are there other interface boards that use this connector? Obviously, for lower speeds the standard Pi interface is "good enough". If you need high speed, you probably want it for : fast ADC / DAC, or DSP. It's interesting how IO speed is becoming the bottleneck for SBC's.
Really interesting device. I wonder how much RAM you really need in Android to watch TH-cam and Netflix in 4K60. If 1GB suffices, then you can get a good board for 40 USD + some dollars for mandatory accessories to watch stuff in your living room while barely using any more power than for the screen.
i would suggest getting an amazon device and reflashing it with a hacked android version. i think they can do the 4K streaming by now and are cheaper because amazon earns on the service, not the devices.
Is it possible to mount the NVME board underneath rather than top of the Rock Pi??? Shorter stand-offs, shorter interface cable and full access to the top of your Rock Pi....
That's what I did and prefer it that way, but I had to modify a RPi layered case to use standoffs, extending the corner screws to mount the NVMe board. (Pics on Radxa's forum.) The heatsink has holes that would line up with the NVMe board, but they aren't threaded on that side. I have the shorter board now and some M2.5 taps arriving this week to remount it directly onto the heatsink w/standoffs. Then, I can lose the RPi case and make a proper aluminum case w/cooling fan.
Question...Does it make sense to install a NVMe on a SBC. I recently went through the headache to install a NVMe on my ryzen1600 windows 7 pc. WD Black 512... I didn't go NVMe for speed really, cause all reviews stated that only if you do media editing or something like that, does a NVMe give you a load/save improvement. no improvement on boot times or game loading times over sata 3 SSD. I did it as I run on a ITX mobo, and needed spare ports for messing with other OS's. so NVMe for win7 and steam, and sata SSD for various Linux tests. Does it really make sense to have a expensive NVMe drive in a SBC? or should you just use a M.2 SSD that's way cheaper and still gives the sata SSD performance with a smaller foot print?
A decent question. M2 form-factor SSDs are space saving, and M.2 NVMe drives will continue to fall in price. Note that this board will not support an M.2 SATA drive.
I think that the main reasons to go NVME is that 1) you do not lose one USB 3.0 port and 2) the whole setup is more compact and less prone to accidental disconnection of SATA-USB converter during manipulation. M.2 SATA SSD would be more cost-effective, but it is not supported by this board.
@@jenda386 Yeah, too bad that M.2 SSD is not supported. functionality vs cost vs performance would be an interesting test, if both NVMe and SSD was supported on the M.2 socket on this board. If cost is not important then this is still pritty cool.
![[LIVE] : ONE ลุมพินี 89 | คู่เอก "ยอดไอคิว vs คิริลล์"](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Z3vYkHJ_5Ig/mqdefault.jpg)
I love how organized you are in thought and presentation. Great job.
yarp - rpi better catch up.. fb.com/PearComputers
if you love him so much, why don't you screw him?
Thanks for an outstanding video on the Rock Pi 4B. I greatly enjoyed the cooling tests portion of the video. One aspect of your productions are extreme useful is the having the command line comments presented at the bottom so they are clear for the viewer. Keep up your excellent work!
I can only imagine the amount of work you put in these films... Respect!
Thanks.
Another outstanding video and review. Special thanks for including the shell commands for apt-get and others in the little yellow callouts. The extra work is greatly appreciated. The information makes things clear and helps us follow along. Thanks again!
This channel is fantastic. The cross comparison to USB SSDs and nvme on the i7 is EXACTLY what I wanted to know
Your videos are usually very good, but this is something else. What an impecable presentation. Very well done!
Thanks. :)
Very informative. Been lovin my Rock Pi 4B for a few weeks now. Will run your bench tests on my 1TB Samsung NVMe SSD.
Wasn't aware of the new shorter PCIe board. Thanks for the info. Mounted mine on the opposite side of the large heatsink to allow better access to the uSD slot & GPIO header.
Review is AWESOME. The people who comment after purchase are awesome. The guys who make the board are awesome!!! I am proud.
The redesign of the M.2 board following comments on my first RockPi 4B video is awesome too! :) Great things going on here.
Another great video. It's very clear that you do an immense amount of work to assemble these videos, and it shows! Great work!
Many thanks for your find feedback.
The M.2 expansion board update with the new form factor is indeed a great improvement. The fan cooling setup is nice alternative to the big heatsink arrangement. Overall is coming together very nicely. The testing helps out a lot Chris. Hope to get one in the near future. Until next time....
Thank you for showing 4k playback. As a filmmaker. It's critical information for me.
I love listening to you ''explaining compuers''
I've been looking forward to this video Chris, and you did not disappoint (of course!). I too was not enamored with the original NVMe mounting solution, but the new iteration looks great. Thanks as always for your methodical and well presented tests!
Although I will always be a huge fan of the traditional desktop; something I have noticed, as you did in this video, is how affordable these SBCs are getting. Of course, the original SBCs were always affordable, but their performance per £ was nothing compared to what we see today. One could argue that someone with a very stringent income could afford a basic Rock Pi 64 and use it as their home computer. It wouldn't be a power house, but it would be powerful and cheap enough to be useable and accessible. I know this might not be the main demographic that SBC manufacturers are targeting (I suspect they are targeting tinkerers, hobbyists, and embedded system applications); but even as just a by-product of SBC success, I think it's great that computing has truly reached an affordable level for everyone. :)
What is truly affordable is recycling, just got a i5 2500 with 8gb of ddr3 for free. This is probably the 6th computer I have saved from the garbage and will find it a home that will appreciate it. Only downside is almost always have to get a power cable and a hdd or ssd to get them running.
Another great video, Chris! I did notice the NVMe card is bowed in the middle from the pems for other sized modules. Recommend a spacer or washer to get rid of the bow.
Good spot.
I own the board and after seeing this vid now it’s time for me to properly cool it and get the m.2 extension board.
Thank you for this video and your others about this SBC, I've been researching the heck out of which one to go with for my All-In-One device project, and this looks to be about it.
If only laptops were as customisable as these. Instead nowadays, you pay 1000+ for soldered everything. Great video as always.
So true.
@@ExplainingComputers Tried out any Linux apps on chromeos yet?
Not yet. But Google Docs runs great. :)
@@ExplainingComputers You would hope! Anyways, be sure to get one with 4gb of ram and 32gb storage for best impact. At least, that's what I've found.
I know it's a shame I miss the days of being able to update a laptops GPU and so forth
Say Hi from Vietnam. I usually watch your videos, but this video is outstanding. well done!
Thanks! :) Greetings back from the UK.
That new M.2 board is a big improvement over the original. Good to see that the manufacturer is so responsive to criticisms. Should inspire confidence in anyone wanting to purchase one of these SBCs.
And they are again on stock now! ;-)
Great!
Thanks from NY. I love your videos.
Greetings from Fountain Hills, Arizona, (near Phoenix). i like these small form boards, thanks for reviewing them.
Hello from the UK! :)
I'm really enjoying your videos: thanks.
With respect to the cooling of the standard Rock Pi 4B that has a cut-out hole in the Perspex cover, it's an inherently bad design to restrict the air flow to the heat exchanger like that. With this sort of finned exchanger without a fan, you want to allow free convection to carry away the hot air, and by burying it under an insulating piece of plastic, and restricting the air flow to it, it's not going to work as well as it should.
I think the main advantage from using that big aluminium exchanger is mainly due to that.
In fact, having a small fan and removing the perspex heat shield would likely show even better results.
As always, a very helpful video. Thank you!
Thanks for the fantastic video. These boards really are quite impressive for the price. I'm seriously thinking about getting one now. I have no idea what I'd do with it, other than nerd around with it, but I'd still like to get one. I'm sure I'd eventually find some kind of use for it though, if I got one lol.
That's exactly how I ended up owning one! LOL!
Recently jumped on the Raspberry Pi bandwagon. Just couldn't resist the Rock Pi 4B specs. Got the 4 GB ram, 64GB eMMC, 1TB NVMe SSD. Now, I'm looking for excuses for uses.
The worst part is that I'm a retired PC (Windows) tech, with no previous Linux experience. This is NOT Windows nor Raspberry Pi. Within an hour of receiving the RPi, I was switching LEDs on and off, via GPIO pins & Python coding. Plan on using Pi's for an environmental control system in a greenhouse. They have been around long enough to have become nearly id10T proof.
The Rock Pi 4B is a very young product. OS and compatibility issues are still being ironed out. Linux heads consider this to be a challenge and there's a helpful community on the support wiki.
I figure that we will eventually become much more compatible. :-)
I bought this unit after your first review, as a good platform for experimentation. I have it booting, but for some reason it didn’t detect my keyboard in Debian. My M.2 isn’t set up, and I may order the new adapter. I’m not sure if it would detect a USB KVM dongle, but I should get another USB keyboard anyway.
Enjoy the videos, as I’ve been following tech since the 50’s, and it’s sometimes a bit scary. 🙂
Hmm... My USB wireless keyboard worked, w/o any issues. Must be your kbd.
Very well-organized info & well-done testing methods. Now on to different temps with different thermal pastes!
Indeed!
Be careful with the extender board when used in conjunction with the eMMC card. The small adapter board from the extender board set presses on the silicon die of the eMMC. This could potentially damage the eMMC die. I brought this up on the Rock Pi forums, and they are working on a fix, but it does not appear to be ready just yet.
I have noticed the "clash" with the eMMC module. Thanks for noting this here.
In the new M.2 v1.4 package there are spacers included to prevent this to happen. Especially when mounting it with the big heatsink.
I only know one Norbert , who was very helpful in shipping my order ~1 month ago. Thanks for the info. Just received my new M.2 board. (Thanks ;-) )Was wondering if the adapter had been modified.
Hate to say it, but the wooden case looks more like a piece of conversational art that would sit on a shelf than a serious protective case. Gonna build/modify an aluminum case to see if I can use it as a heatsink w/fan.
Interesting temp results, I'd probably go with the big heatsink as I'd like to think I'd be using less electricity over time. Great vid as always.
Also, in case you do want to push it in an enclosed place, you still have a fan option.
I got a Rock Pi 4B after watching some of your videos and reading about the Panfrost open source driver. So far it's an awesome SBC. I have a bunch of Raspberry Pis and an old Cubieboard v1 but these new RK3399 boards are FAST! The Rock Pi seems to be an excellent value if you're willing to forgo the Raspberry Pi software ecosystem. I've been running custom images on my Raspberry Pis anyways (64 bit Debian and Gentoo) so the experience with the Rock Pi is pretty similar. So far I think I prefer Armbian for its single partition setup. Trying to figure out how to build my own kernel and boot it on the Rock Pi. Built fine, but can't figure out how to boot it.
Hi, it might be a good idea to connect to the community @forum.radxa.com/ There are plenty of people there who might be able to help you.
I’m always fascinated with the heat testing. So pleased they sent the new extension board, but would have liked to have seen you try to remove and then insert the sad card. It still looks awkward. With that being said, I do like the longer cable. Looking forward to your next video!
The card is asy to get out (well, relatively) if you use a finger from either side. :)
@@ExplainingComputers Thanks so much for the reply. I can visualize what you are talking about. I appreciate it. By the way, if I could only have one TH-cam channel to follow, it would be yours.
495MB/sec with a NVMe HAT, I'm impressed! . My Rpi 4 8Gb tops at: 301.95 Mb/sec with a USB 3 to SATA adapter(Kingston A400 480Gb) and 308.04 MB/sec with a Samsung T5 1TB external SSD.
Update Sep 9th: My Rpi4 8gb OC'd to 2.147Ghz running TwisterOS 1.5 and booting from a Samsung Evo 860 SSD w/ ASM1153E USB3 to SATA adapter scores 395MB/sec w/ UAS and Trim enabled.
Thanks for a very informative video, think I will wait for the booting to NVMe is sorted before I buy one.
Hello Chris, I used the sudo hdparm -t --direct command to compare the speeds on an ssd connected via usb 2 adapter to the pi 3B+ VS the speed of an sd card. So the ssd is around 30 MB/sec while the SD card is 11 MB/sec. Of course i used your other great video about the berryboot to run raspbian from the ssd drive. im waiting for the Pi 4 B that i have ordered , so when using the ssd via usb 3 i will have much faster speeds. Great videos.... im learning so much! thank you!
You will have MUCH faster speeds! I have done this very hdparm desk on a Pi 4 (and a Jetson Nano) in this week's video. The extra USB speed is stunning. :)
nice sunday, Chris......
Here we are again!
well that is a fine package and the fact they actually responded, making the adjustment right away! would like to see a 8GB version! those small boards are awesome to run small dedicated game servers due to low power consumption and the fact you do not need to use a big bulky computer for it! (specially if you have many for many servers for many games or maps!)
Another great video. Very informative. Do you think the chip may be slightly overclocked since it seems to prefer either a fan or the large heatsink?
The RK3399 chips certainly achieve their performance by running rather hot. :)
Hmmm that Rockpi 4b keeps Looking better than most of the other rk3399 sbc thanks professor ..
Hi Chris, have you thought about reviewing the new Jetson Nano? There’s another interesting SBC based on intel processor: The “up-board”. Greetings!
Greetings! :) I have a Jetson Nano arriving this week -- a video should post here on 28 April, probably the first of several. I may look at an UP as some point -- though probably before that an UDOO BOLT (long promised) and Odroid H2 (when available again).
Looking forward to watch those videos. Thank you for your answer Chris. Have an excellent week!@@ExplainingComputers
@@ExplainingComputers great, i looking forward for your test of Jetson nano.....
@@airwaveindehouse Unfortunately and I mean this seriously Nvidia have no interest in supporting Open Drivers for any of their gear, the drivers are god awful binary blobs on old kernels. I am hoping AMD move into the Arm space to straighten things up a bit with Vega/Navi ( AI ) ..
That would be far more friendly and interesting than the Nvidia offering which really is super over priced also.
Hello Chris.
Great video that brightens my cloudy Sunday here. 🌞
Combination of the best: Linux + SBC + NVMe + Testing.
Nice suggestion in comment below, how about a Jetson Nano review?
Hi Elvira. :) It is cloudy here too. I've a Jetson Nano arriving this week, so plan to post my first video on it on April 28 (two weeks today).
ExplainingComputers
Yey! 😁👍
Decent sized heat sink that. Shame it cant boot from NVMe yet but at least its there. I still marvel at what a palm sized board is capable of
Why is booting from NVME important?, eMMC 5 is fast enough tbh, I would rather assign a 1TB nvme stick to /home vs the whole OS, oh and id use BTRFS.
@@sethrd999 you dont have to use it JUST to boot. If you have a 1TB NVMe and can boot from it, why wouldn't you want to boot from it? It's a shame that something that can use it cant boot from it (yet)
@@sethrd999 You would also put your most used utilities on the NVMe and your web browsers etc. Or is that just me
Every end of a review of Chris I imagine Jim Carey in ace ventura 2 taking air before proving how he knew the professors habits.
Great review and stellar job at doing it.
Just a thought though, how would it do with a egpu (via tb3 or m.2)? Just makes me more curious because this hasn't really been done before on an arm cpu (At least that I know of).
So we've seen temperature test results for a small heatsink, a large heatsink, and a small heatsink with small fan attached...
Now I'm curious to see if having 2 small fans, attached to the large heatsink (side by side, like some PC video cards) would have an even greater impact on temperature 🙂
Good day Profesor, Every Weekend is a pleasure view your show, Greetings
Greetings!
You should be able to boot from sdcard via grub and then boot whatever from nvme?
Yes, it is possible (thought I have not tried it) to put the boot loader on SD or eMMC, and then load everything else from NVMe,
we now do have uboot image on the SPI flash which allows the board to boot vial NVMe SSD.
@@NB-sw1op great news :)
Hi Christopher. Great video. I've learned something, how to get the desimal right for the temperature. I once searched so long for it... I always use that command for a taskbar application, but without the decimal.
Nice to see the NVMe tests. I couldn't do it because the drive I bought didn't work. It was the cheapest I could find. There is a way of getting the NVMe faster. Search for KingSpec 128GB M.2 NVMe not found Debian+Ubuntu(a thread I started, the last post is what you need)
I made my PineH64 video this week. I like the board a lot, but for great software it will be waiting for kernel 5.2. Then there'll be GPU support in mainline for the H6. It is a better design than the OPi3, except it's wifi is 2.4Ghz vs 5Ghz of the OPi3.
I've got my Odroid N2 since the beginning of the week. They send it faster than expected.
I love it a lot for what I need it to do. But there are problems with it that I hope can be fixed. I also seem to have a faulty ethernet netwerk adapter. It doesn't work when on gigabit, but it does work when on 100Mbit. Luckily I don't normally use ethernet. Hardkernel is looking for a sollution.
The N2 is superfast. The RK3399's are no match against it's CPU power. But it lacks in connectivity. No on-board wifi, only 1 lane USB3 shared over 4 ports(can only have the speed of 1 port over all of them), and nothing else to connect to. No sata or PCIe.
It also doesn't have good GPU/VPU drivers. But that's expected of such a new board, but I hope that's comming, because that's it's only selling point. Being great for gaming and desktop use.
Greetings. Have a nice day.
NicoD.
Thanks Nico -- I searched a lot for the syntax too! :) I will follow up on the NVMe speed thing. Good luck with your N2. As always, software is the most important thing.
Great video, good effort and nice to see, was that Lineage os Android TV, it looked a lovely operating system, similar to the Nvidia shield and android TV on the xu4, this rock pi is looking a better choice than the other rk3399 boards.
I've been using the board running Android and connected to my TV as a TH-cam player for the past few days. Works very well indeed. So far it is my favourite RK3399 SBC.
Thanks from Florida’s Space Coast..
Greetings Sir. You had a great launch this week -- plus landings! :)
Yes we did. I took handheld phone video from my viewing spot. Video on my “channel”.
Just taken a look. Amazing to see humanity reaching into space like that.
@@ExplainingComputers The Raspberry Pi has been into orbit on the ISS. Rock Pi should go one better and send two Rock Pi's to the moon. They would, of course, then be moon Rocks... Thank you.
13:35 I wanna see you put a stress test on the large heat sink and add in an artificial fan.
Perfect for a bedroom media center. Android looks a lot smoother too! 😊
I've used it as an Android media player connected to my TV for 3 days now. Runs really well.
Awesome!! 😊
Thanks Chris. I must use htop more than top! Best wishes.
THX..for another informative video.
Another excellent video!!
Very informative! It makes me curious how this board compares with the newly released Raspberry Pi in terms of processing and IO speeds.
Smart choice by Radxa to go with the lightweight LXDE, although that's going to be replaced in the future by LXQt. But I'm not sure if Radxa is updating anyway. That's the main thing (for me) that SBC's are suffering from: older software. So, it's nice to see there is a Community Image Page; that might change things!
there are more distributions starting to support ROCK PI 4 directly. Next to the mainline kernel support we have Armbian which is maintained directly, also just a few days ago Manjaro ARM anounced 19.06 and the support for ROCK PI 4.
You are Awesome.😄
Great video Chris. Chris can you use this for STAKING? ADA? Thank you sir!!
Hi, I couldn't find your usual sysbench and gimp benchmarks you used on the
other SBCs you have reviewed in the past.
I only use those for comparative tests. I may do a future Rock Pi 4B vs another SBC video featuring those tests.
Hey Chris,
I am currently looking at ordering this board shortly so thanks for the update, I am putting a build script together ( Arch root ) with Ayufan'd UBoot + Kernel 5.0/1 + latest Mesa for panfrost/midgard/bifrost ( Mali Txx/Gxx support).
Everything being equal the performance should be pretty good I would imagine. Il let you know how it goes, perhaps you might want to try my image also if/when its good to go.
Sounds good. By all means share a link. :)
Why didn’t you do large heatsink+fan?
I should have done that, yes! :)
I was thinking that myself. Glad you mentioned it.
NVMe drive looks bent does it need a spacer, can't be good for the solder joints... just saying that's all.
I like it. Got to get one or two.
Nice one Chris I love the rock pi board. As software progresses on the rockpi it would be nice to re visit this SBC...😀😀😀 Kim 😀 😀😀
Yes, this is certainly an SBC to keep an eye on.
Hi. I loved theese videos about m.2 disks mounted on sbc. Did you installed the operating system on that disks? Or that diska are secondary ones? Thanks.
When I made this video it was not possible to boot the OS from the SSD. But the current version of the Rock Pi 4B or 3C can do this.
Chris - great video. One concern I have though is should you really be showing those Kodi apps? I wouldn't want you to get into trouble that's all.
I maybe should have blurred them out. I don't run them or suggest doing so. :) Thanks for the heads up.
the kodi build is way out of date and the only video plugin that might still work would be the youtube so i don't think there's a problem. nice informative video with no bull as usual.
Thanks for posting your bash commands. I find bash to be difficult but workable. Bash scripts are incomprehensible.
Another Fine Video Sir ! Recon I can do a SATA on the ol ZX-81 ? Snerk.
Great video Chris
If you put a fan on top of the large heatsink will do a better temperature performance?
It would! I should have tried that. :)
@@ExplainingComputers I'm curious if there's a noticeable effect depending on how the fan is oriented to the big heatsink (align airflow parallel/perpendicular/onto the heatsink ridges). I bet you could get 3 or 4 of these and arrange them in a chimney arrangement (think mac-pro) with a single fan blowing upwards cooling them all.
Love the chimney idea!
Wow. NVME on a SBC. We have come a long way since Raspi 1
We have indeed.
Entertaining as always. Can you recommend a light weight Linux distro for older laptop single core?
I would go with Lubuntu: lubuntu.net/
I am getting ready to try out MX Linux on an old Atom net book that's currently running Mint 17.1. I think it'll be pretty good on something low power. Also, AntiX, a related project is supposed to be good on low-power machines. Lubuntu isn't a bad starting place, as was recommended, but I don't think it's as light as it used to be, so I'm going to try MX first. Plus, I like xfce more.
Hi Chris, any chance you could share the part numbers for the whole kit? Especially the new extender board and the heat sink? Cheers mate 👍🏼
Hi Chris and people who read comments. I'm thinking of putting together home automation based on sbc with touchscreen monitor (and mount it on a wall). Not sure if that was covered before, but I think I'd need fairly quick Android. What would be your recommendations for such a setting.
And Chris your videos remind me those 1980s tv programs on the future of computers etc. Guess we are similar age. Big fan.
Thanks for being a fan. :) I would run a linux distro, not Android. :)
Hi Chris, I'm not sure if it's available for ARM, but on x86 I found stress and stress-ng to be better than sysbench for stressing the CPU. You can also specify the required number of threads and time to run the test (in seconds). For Debian--based distributions, both should be right in the system repositories.
Thanks for this. I will see if an ARM version is available, and works with this board. In the past I've strugged to find anything other than SysBench to actually work for such tests on ARM SBCs.
Chris, Can you recommend a SBC for use as a router running PFSense?
This is what I'm using. You need something that supports AES-NI crypto for future versions of pfSense. Something with a fair amount of memory and decent CPU. The APU2d4 is $120. www.pcengines.ch/apu2d4.htm
Just what I was looking for thank you for the recommendation
Great show and great test, shame I cant seem to buy this in England.
try it here: www.reichelt.de/index.html?ACTION=446&LA=446&q=rock%20pi4
excellent video testing :) love your channel :)
Thanks.
what about a large heat sink with a small fan
and a large heat sink with a big fan?
I'd love to see that.
So many more options to try! :)
@@ExplainingComputers ...roughing up the heat sink base side w/320~400 grit sandpaper helps... & sticking a 10 penny nail or two in a small HS's fins helps too! Cheers
back in the old days we'd polish our heatsinks for better thermal transfer. got any tests for that sandpaper idea?
@@TuttleScott years of thermal analysis, on average up to 5 deg C drop is possible. It's not performed in commercial pcba assembly due to cost/time constraints. The biggest issue in the industry i found is flatness, e.g., the HS base is concave and the chip top is concave ( or visa versa ). For the most part, roughing a HS base in a random pattern increases the surface area resulting in better thermal transfer. 2nd part of the equation is cleaning the surfaces before using tape, paste or glue & applying the correct pressure.... w/o breaking anything. ( & it may look odd, but if there's room, the nail(s) works ) ... Cheers
I was thinking the same thing, he should have put like a full on PC fan on the large heatsink. If you're gonna have this big and bulky of an SBC, might as well go all the way
Hi Chris. Can you at some point start measuring their consumption over a certain identical test?
That naming scheme... For a second I as thinking "Why I didn't know RPI4 is out".
Can you test this board with other (much slower but still faster than 500MB/s) NVMe? I'm wondering if the transfer speeds would be comparable or lower to those of the WD drive.
I don't have other NVMe drives I'm afraid.
Hi, just love your Rasp berry Pi videos and I have a need to install security cameras in my house and wondering if there’s a way to use a Rasp Berry Pi 4B as a NVR. Thank you very much.
Checkout my video here: th-cam.com/video/8YUM7jio6dk/w-d-xo.html :)
My WD 500gb NVME is flying thankyou sir for your video :D can you make a video about how to properly install and optimize the NVME???
I simply plugged it in and it worked, after mounting the drive (sudo mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 ).
I prefer my SSD mounted on the opposite side of the heatsink, which allows access to the microSD slot & board's connectors. Used a layered RPi case, which also has an internal cooling fan. Pics on the Radxa forum. Folks there are very helpful.
Hope this helps.
@@TheOleHermit thanks
Great video as usual. ty
Great and amazing work...as usual from you. Only one question: have try to register to Allinet shop but it seems they only sell to resellers and not to final customers.. do I'm wrong? How could I buy these stuff as a normal private customer? Many thank's
Thanks for this. As an alternative, the Rock Pi range is now carried by www.seeedstudio.com/
Great!!! Thank you Sir!!
A very interesting video thanks very much.
Hi Chris, I have a question. Is it possible to move the /home. To the M.2 drive or is this not possible on an Arm OS I'm going to be using the Manjaro arm install for the set up you have on this vid and I was wondering the use of the extra drive if I can't do this. Thank for any help and thoughts I truly respect your opinion.
The latest version of the Rock Pi 4B (1.3 I think) can boot from NVMe, so you could install the qwhole OS and user folders on the M.2 drive.
Hello sir how can i install latest debian 9 on rock pi 4b pls suggest me ....pls!!!!
that might be an interesting thread for you to follow: forum.radxa.com/t/building-debian-arm64/554
Now i want this for media + home server things
It would be good for that. :) I want an OpenMediaVault image for this board.
@@ExplainingComputers OMV could be run on the Armbian image, some of our clients already do that. Still - work has to be done on the Armbian image.
Nice Video!
I recently saw a Crowdsupply FPGA board [NiteFury] that uses the M.2 interface. That got me wondering:
Are there other interface boards that use this connector?
Obviously, for lower speeds the standard Pi interface is "good enough". If you need high speed, you probably want it for : fast ADC / DAC, or DSP.
It's interesting how IO speed is becoming the bottleneck for SBC's.
M.2 supports many interfaces (PCIe, USB and SATA) for many devices -- see my video: th-cam.com/video/SP0Brsc0dMY/w-d-xo.html
Fastest NVMe performance on any SBC board with arm64 architecture in the market.
Really interesting device. I wonder how much RAM you really need in Android to watch TH-cam and Netflix in 4K60. If 1GB suffices, then you can get a good board for 40 USD + some dollars for mandatory accessories to watch stuff in your living room while barely using any more power than for the screen.
i would suggest getting an amazon device and reflashing it with a hacked android version.
i think they can do the 4K streaming by now and are cheaper because amazon earns on the service, not the devices.
Great job as always.
I wonder if this board plays demanding 4k videos that are x265 10bit or 60fps (or both!) 🤔
In theory it can do this, though I have not tested that.
@@ExplainingComputers Thank you 🙏
Is it possible to mount the NVME board underneath rather than top of the Rock Pi??? Shorter stand-offs, shorter interface cable and full access to the top of your Rock Pi....
Yes, the M.2 extender can be mounted under the heatsink, just as you say.
That's what I did and prefer it that way, but I had to modify a RPi layered case to use standoffs, extending the corner screws to mount the NVMe board. (Pics on Radxa's forum.)
The heatsink has holes that would line up with the NVMe board, but they aren't threaded on that side. I have the shorter board now and some M2.5 taps arriving this week to remount it directly onto the heatsink w/standoffs. Then, I can lose the RPi case and make a proper aluminum case w/cooling fan.
Very good video ! A+++++++
Question...Does it make sense to install a NVMe on a SBC. I recently went through the headache to install a NVMe on my ryzen1600 windows 7 pc. WD Black 512...
I didn't go NVMe for speed really, cause all reviews stated that only if you do media editing or something like that, does a NVMe give you a load/save improvement. no improvement on boot times or game loading times over sata 3 SSD. I did it as I run on a ITX mobo, and needed spare ports for messing with other OS's. so NVMe for win7 and steam, and sata SSD for various Linux tests.
Does it really make sense to have a expensive NVMe drive in a SBC? or should you just use a M.2 SSD that's way cheaper and still gives the sata SSD performance with a smaller foot print?
A decent question. M2 form-factor SSDs are space saving, and M.2 NVMe drives will continue to fall in price. Note that this board will not support an M.2 SATA drive.
I think that the main reasons to go NVME is that 1) you do not lose one USB 3.0 port and 2) the whole setup is more compact and less prone to accidental disconnection of SATA-USB converter during manipulation. M.2 SATA SSD would be more cost-effective, but it is not supported by this board.
@@jenda386 Yeah, too bad that M.2 SSD is not supported. functionality vs cost vs performance would be an interesting test, if both NVMe and SSD was supported on the M.2 socket on this board. If cost is not important then this is still pritty cool.
It would be great if you could boot from MVMe.
As an example what kind of practical applications would you use this combination for? I'm Curious 👍
Media player (a great TV Android box), small server/NAS. Network/remote camera controller. 3D printer controller. etc. :)
@@ExplainingComputers Thanks 👍
Hi any chance you can do a how to video of a smart doorbell made out of a raspberry pi zero 📷📷📷📷📷📷📷📷📷📷📷📷📷📷📷📷📷 thanks
Nice idea, noted.